Abel III's Awakening - 31. Chapter 31 Bart's Ordeal

Chapter 31

Bart's Ordeal

As abstracted from the personal logs of Abel Silversmith III:

After lunch, we escorted Bart to his cabin. His luggage was piled up just inside the family hallway and we helped him carry it to his cabin and get things unpacked and put away. At least a steward had professionally packed his stuff, and things were logically packed. Dennis told him to only unpack his everyday stuff and toiletries. I warned Bart that once the ship was underway that the gravity would be reduced to twenty percent and that perhaps he would want to wear a ship's uniform as they had the magnetized soles. Bart was astounded that gravity would only be twenty percent as the cruise ships also maintained fifty percent gravity and he assumed that all space vehicles did so.

After we got him settled in, we asked if he was ready to begin the first part of his training, which would involve us delivering a prepackaged data dump directly into his mind. I explained that it was the Silversmith family package and that it was huge and included information on the telepathic families, the known hidden families, and the government controlled 'outed' families as well as information about shielding, sendings, and a host of other background data. The package on which I had added my findings and prepared did not include information about our ability to telepathically communicate with Hal, nor did it contain any information about the Guardians.

Bart asked, “How long will it take to deliver or send it to me?”

“Not long, only about twenty minutes, however the length of time it takes you to process it is a question we will have to discover,” I replied.

In a resigned voice, “We might as well get started” Bart replied.

We sat on either side of him on the couch in his cabin and told him to relax. Then mind-melding with Dennis, I began delivering the package and as I expected this took about twenty minutes. We finished and did not withdraw from Bart expecting his mind to activate the package and start the main information routine. However, nothing happened.

Bart asked, “Is something wrong?”

{No, just unexpected} I replied telepathically. {We need to actuate the main information routine, something our minds did automatically when we received our complete packages. It seems your mind is not hard wired to do that and we must examine ourselves and then adjust your mind to make it so. Let us concentrate for a bit so we can see what to do.}

Meanwhile from our mind-melded point of view, Dennis and I were exploring and testing our own neural pathways to see what caused the package to actuate when we received it and then figure out a way to duplicate that in Bart's mind.

Bart, who was still somewhat distraught, became somewhat alarmed at the idea of someone adjusting the 'hard wiring' of his mind.

We took the time to explain, {After every telepath processes the data dump and information package, their mind has to undergo a complete re-integration, which effectively re-wires their mind to handle the extrasensory perceptions without overloading. Even so, you will have to learn to construct filters and specific shields to help you deal with the constant mental barrage, especially when in close proximity to hundreds or thousands of people.}

We also sent reassurance at a basic level and told him, {We will be with you every step of the way and keep you safe.}

Our reassurance seemed to work, but meanwhile the problem with constructing the activation routine in Bart's mind looked nearly impossible. Our two main psychic neural pathways had an axonal bridge, which Bart's didn't. Finally, the engineering half of our mind-meld came up with a solution and ran it by me. It involved doing some very delicate telekinesis to the two basic psychic neural pathways in Bart's brain in effect, making an axonal bridge at a certain point where none now existed. All that existed were two small dendrites, one on each of the two critical neural pathways, sort of pointing at each other. They however did not bridge the gap.

This was going to take some time and we decided that Bart needed to lie down on his bed and we would be putting him into psychic sleep while we worked.

Inducing extreme tiredness and the desire to go to sleep was easy and Bart readily shed his clothes and climbed into his bed and was soon fast and deeply asleep. Then in our mind-meld we stimulated each of the two dendrites to make them grow. Dennis, the master engineer was 'driving' and was using my telekinesis to electrically stimulate the ends of each dendrite. It was a slow and painstaking process, but we saw the two dendrites swell in size and push toward each other as Dennis alternately micro zapped each in the area he targeted for growth. Finally the two small nerve endings met and then joined. We selectively continued to stimulate the newly formed axon until it looked robust. When we were satisfied that the newly constructed axon was ready, we stimulated one of the main neural pathways to see if the stimulus would cross the bridge and stimulate the other one. And it worked.

It was not as easy as I described it. We sweated bullets the whole time; not sure we could do this, but determined to try. Don't ask either of us to explain how we micro zapped the two dendrites using telekinesis at the precise spots in his brain, as neither of us fully understood how we did it. It seems that our combined mind-melded psychic ability knew we could accomplish this as necessity forced us to expand our ability. Nevertheless, it was very nerve wracking and very exhausting. After we saw that the neural bridge was viable, we both collapsed to either side of Bart and fell asleep ourselves.

We were awakened by the smell of hot stew as my dad had brought us steaming bowls of it along with fresh bread and butter as well as some iced tea. Bart was under the covers and we were lying along either side of him and my dad gave us an inquiring look and I sent him a brief synopsis of what happened and what we accomplished.

Just after that, Bart sat up and turned his head sidewise and said “Oh!” rather weakly. He had a blinding headache. Yet despite that, as Dennis and I were still closely monitoring him, we saw that the activation of the package had begun. We tried to mitigate his headache as his mind was being filled with the information from the basic routine. Bart was still hungry and we had him sit-up and we fed him from one of the bowls of soup as his mind began to take in all the information from the package. Dad left us to it and quietly departed the cabin as we finished feeding Bart and fed ourselves in between monitoring what was going on inside Bart. Unlike me, Bart played the package routines at a much slower speed and we knew we could be at this all night. After about an hour, we got Bart up to go to the facilities and we all relieved our bladders around the bowl while he was still processing. We washed our hands mechanically and returned to the bed where Dennis and I both shed our clothes and joined Bart under the covers.

It took Bart the better part of two and half days just to run through the main package and then it took another three days for his mind to reorganize and reintegrate after assimilating all the information. By this time, the Silverspin was getting ready to depart the Nexus and my dad had informed Engineering that both Dennis and I were involved in a project full-time and it would take us at least another week and they would just have to cover for us. Needless to say we kept quite close to Bart.

Bart was quite easy on the eyes, both our physical ones and our psychic ones. He was taller than us at five feet ten inches tall (or 1.788 meters) and weighed about one hundred and seventy five pounds. (79.4 kg.) He was fit, but not muscled and did not look like he was used to working out. On board ship it was not an option and our times in the exercise room were not his most pleasant and he was clear in letting us know just how much he hated it. His platinum blond hair was short at the sides and longer on top and at the back. His eyes varied from sea green when he was content to a stormy gray when he was not and we saw a lot of gray in them. He had a large forehead and high cheeks with an aquiline nose and a strong jaw. His lips were wide and lush and he had dimples to either side. His ears were small and well formed and his feet were long and narrow. His fingers were long and both hands were well cared for as well. Finally, he had large testicles that hung low in a distended hairless sack and his penis was plump and topped by a curly mass of platinum blond pubes as well. He was definitely a grower and not a shower.

His aura was also unusual and beautiful in its own way. It was a rich array of greens from sea green to turquoise and was edged in a platinum brilliance that grew as he grew into his power.

The change from fifty percent normal gravity to only twenty percent did not go well for Bart who was slightly nauseous the first couple of days. He also took to wearing the ship's uniforms with the magnetized booties and had to learn the skating motion of walking. Being a planet person, dealing with the fifty percent gravity had not been a problem for him, but the drop to twenty percent took some getting used to.

It was when we got Bart start to practice working on his shields himself after guiding him through what we had already constructed for him, that we encountered his stubborn streak, as he wanted to tear down all the shields we had put in place and rebuild them himself. It was a slow and time consuming process of which he was constantly asking for our help and guidance and then trying something else before agreeing with most of our suggestions. Then came the work on deciding on filters and how they could be adjusted and selectively pass through important information. Finally, toward the end of the extra week, we worked on his sendings and how to select whom he was sending to and to listen for the response.

In the first few days, we worried that the slowness with which Bart proceeded indicated that he would have limited ability, and perhaps be only a level one to level two telepath. In the subsequent week, we learned it was actually Bart's scientific mind analyzing every step of the way that caused him to proceed so slowly as he studied and wanted to test every facet of the knowledge he was provided. He had the scientific way of thinking so ingrained, that he could not accept anything on trust or faith. Also, after his personal feelings were torched by his former boyfriend Jack, he would not allow himself to trust his feelings about us and fully accept our friendship.

It all made for a very difficult and stressful time as neither Dennis or I had any personal alone time nor personal time alone with each other. Bart was our main concern. Needless to say, in two very sexually active young men not used to repressing our sexual urges, it soon came to a boiling point and our tempers flared and Bart became angry in response as he told us, “Get out of my sight and fuck like rabbits before I fuck you myself!”

This occurred just as my dad was passing by, and he sent to Dennis and I, {Retire to your cabin for some play time. I will keep watch over Bart. You have two hours!}

We didn't question his authority and hurried to our cabin, shed our clothes and were in our rock show shower within a minute. We loosened up in the shower and each came once and then dried and headed for the main attraction in our bed. Alone at last! We made full use of all one hundred and twenty minutes and demonstrated our love for each other on, and in each other multiple times.

When we finished and our time was up, we used our psychic thread connection to Bart to determine where he was. We were somewhat surprised to find him next door in Dad and Kade's cabin pleasantly occupied as the meat sandwiched between my dad and his lover. Dad was plowing Bart's ass while Bart was pounding into Kade. Bart was relaxed enough to enjoy his encounter with two older men who knew how to get it on. In our voyeurism, we wondered why we had not thought of this earlier as we knew of Bart's innate attraction to older men. Since Bart was recreationally occupied, we jumped back into our shower and danced with joy like young colts to the pulsating music, mist and light show. Oh, we got clean again too.

The next few days went much better for everyone and we were all more relaxed. Bart was becoming more assured in using his ability and had initiated sendings with both my dad and Kade in addition to Dennis and I. He was also studying our shields and filters and always wondering if he should modify his some more. Of course, any change he made was incremental and then fully tested by him. He was nothing if not deliberate and careful.

That evening we all met again in Grandfather and Drew's cabin to discuss Bart's progress and for Grandfather and the others to do some testing of Bart's ability. Bart was nervous and worried that he would make some stupid mistake. We reassured him that it was nothing like that. In fact, Dennis and I had been testing him regularly and made the tests into games so that Bart wasn't even really aware of just how close we had measured his ability. We were pleasantly surprised that he was a high level three telepath based on our test results from those games, as he could sense and communicate with others up to about four kilometers away. His shields and filters had a scientific precision to them and did not look natural at all and we had warned him about them standing out.

The meeting went well from our point of view as everyone congratulated us on delivering the package of information to Bart and guiding him through the process. Bart was somewhat taken aback as he felt he had done all the work and suffered through all the changes. He did fine on the test that Grandfather and Drew gave him and they both read him rather deeply; Grandfather to see if Bart was going to be an asset to the 'hidden' families or a problem. Dennis and I too had been somewhat worried about that but Bart's thoughts and action laid those to rest. Grandfather confirmed our assessment that Bart was a level three telepath and he wanted to know if we should divert the Silverspin to expedite dropping off Bart on his home planet or keep to our regular schedule and drop him off in another sixty days. Bart for his part, was all for having additional mentoring, but Dennis and I had been absent from our department too long and we could no longer be spared on a full-time basis. So for us, it was back to our 'real' jobs and we would only have time for Bart in the evenings and during our other free time.

Drew and Grandfather volunteered to mentor Bart in their spare time as they had the most of anyone and could think of many practice scenarios for him to hone skills. Bart was amenable to that suggestion and the second part of Bart's training started. In addition it was clear that Bart would be spending some more time with my dad and Kade as well.

My cousins Steve and Bill were glad to see that Dennis and I would no longer have to spend all our time occupied with Bart as they were feeling a little neglected. However, Dennis and I knew through our permanent thread links to them that neither of them had done without company. But we did miss spending time with them too and the usual bantering and trash talk.

Grandfather and Drew gave us daily updates on what they had Bart do and I think for them and for Bart it was the longest sixty days of their lives. Just as he had with us, Bart had a million questions and wanted detailed explanations for everything. While Grandfather and Drew were fairly patient, Bart managed to try their patience on a daily basis and of course they frustrated him as well when Drew or Grandfather's reply was often, “The answer is self-evident,” and then telepathically demonstrated why that was so.

The Silverspin continued on its route and Dennis and I once again became immersed in the day-to-day operations of our department. The rest of the team was glad to be back up to full strength and some deferred maintenance was undertaken. We made several transits through intra-space as we made our various deliveries as well as taking on board new cargo at most of our stops.

When we were about a week out from Bart's home world of Archimedes, Bart said, “You guys are so lucky to have your family and your whole telepathic support network. I have been trying to work out all the possible scenarios I might encounter on my home world, but I know something unexpected will happen and happen regularly.”

“The best reaction is to act as if you don't know anything other than what you have physically heard. Use your telepathic knowledge sparingly and always be on guard from appearing to know something you haven't heard or read somewhere. That means you must be able to control your reactions. Knowledge of what others are thinking is a powerful advantage, but you must be stringently careful in applying that knowledge or reacting to it, so as not to arouse suspicion. If you remember that, you will be fine,” I replied.

Dennis and I were reading Bart and clearly he was concerned about his temper and reacting inappropriately to something he telepathically picked up. We reinforced his resolve to remain in control and rein in his temper no matter how provoked he felt inside. We showed him what we were doing and explained in detail how he could work on that himself, even giving him a key word to concentrate on to start an automatic process to help maintain control. We of course promised to stay in contact and to stop by whenever our journeys brought us together again.

Finally, the day arrived and Bart was all packed and ready to resume his life on his home planet. He was arriving only a few days later than his pre-planned cruise would have finished, so he was ready to get back to his research and his company. There were some tearful good-byes as he left the Silverspin at the space station Eureka to take the public shuttle down to the planet. The whole family was there to see him off and he was somewhat torn between being glad to be going home and leaving the Silverspin.

My whole family felt proud that we helped Bart successfully traverse the pitfalls of the emergence of his powers and that all the time and effort it took was clearly worth it.